


He Who Watches the Heavens

by wrennette



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Finale spoilers, Gen, Unbeta'd, after the end of the world, archiving old words, not dealing well with loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-19 14:45:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4750217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrennette/pseuds/wrennette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the end of his world, Lee goes a little bit crazy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	He Who Watches the Heavens

**Author's Note:**

> Archiving from LJ. Originally posted there in 2009. 
> 
> Battlestar Galactica and the characters within it do not belong to the author, who intends no copyright infringement and makes no profit.
> 
> Original AN: Set after the finale. Spoilers for the finale. Title from one of the numerous epithets for the god Apollon, via the Romans and Wikipedia.

Lee had gone a little bit mad after Kara disappeared. The fact that his father and the woman he had come to think of as a mother were gone from his life didn't help. While the rest of humanity clung together in their fearful tribes of survivors, he threw himself into the wilderness with the careless abandon of a man with nothing left to live for. And yet, despite hunting for days and nights on end, throwing himself at wild creatures his people had no names for, he did not die, could not be killed. 

His once bulky, gymnasium crafted physique grew lean and tight, whittled down to the barest of necessity to stay alive. His hair, already lengthening from his military brush cut, grew longer yet, and lightened in the sun. His once alabaster skin burned at first, then tanned golden, and despite his dismissal of the other survivors, Lee found he could not abandon them completely. He circled their encampments like a wandering satellite, leaving presents of the large game he took down out on the wide savannas.

His elliptical jaunts brought him in contact with the natives of their new planet, and they were something new to fight, something new to learn. He picked up some of their tongue, and they some of his, and somehow he found himself playing intermediary, bringing the two groups into contact with one another. Trade slowly began, and relationships that went deeper. But Lee could not stay in one place long. The golden spirit of the only woman he had ever truly loved still lurked in the corners of his eyes, and it was only when he focused all of his being on bare survival, hunting prey that ought to have been too large for a single man with a simple spear, that he was able to leave her memory behind.

Few people talked to him when he did finally circle, as ever, back to the encampments. They watched him carefully, as they watched the Cylons. He did not begrudge them that. His presence had been a curse it seemed, all that he loved, all that he touched turned to ash. The Cylons treated him slightly better, the Sixes and Eights at least. But still they did not know quite what to make of him, could not quite forgive him for being an Adama. So he left again, in a different direction, loping easily through the rudimentary farms that fringed the settlement.

At the edges of the encampment he paused at the only truly welcome house. Hera smiled trustingly at him from the yard, and Sharon regarded him with her usual coolness from the open doorway. He did not speak, and for a moment, neither did they. 

"Karl's around back," Sharon finally said, and Lee nodded, for a moment remaining still, a hunter's trick to lure out wary prey. He broke after a moment though, circled around the outside of their fence. He had not set foot on their land yet, as if their simple acceptance would insinuate some fatal flaw into his emotion stripped life. Behind the house Karl laboured, splitting wood with a heavy axe, his muscles gleaming and rippling beneath his sun reddened skin. 

"Apollo," Karl said evenly, the only one who still addressed him by the old callsign. 

"Helo," Lee responded in kind. Lee once more adopted that too still stance of waiting, and Karl stilled as well, just as patient. Lee smiled after a while, a sudden brightness in his eyes, his teeth cutting bright white across his face. "Come with me," Lee asked, not for the first time. Karl shook his head silently, as he always did. This perpetual game, the only weakness Lee allowed himself, this desire for a partner through the long nights and thirsty days. A partner as strong as himself, as skilled as himself. A partner just as haunted by visions of golden angels. 

Both men settled back into the stillness of ambush. Karl moved first this time. His broad shoulders loosened slightly, a sigh that traveled through his whole body.

"Come inside," Karl offered, the return showing of weakness, the invitation of this old competitor into his sanctuary. Stillness cloaked them for a long moment, and then Lee shook his head. He turned away then, his weapons once more in hand. Within ten steps Lee was impossible to distinguish from the scrubby brush and tall grasses, gone back into the wilderness that afforded him his only respite. The steady thunk of Karl's labours once more filled the stillness, and Lee disappeared deeper into the savanna.

Every time Lee circled back through the settlement that the Agathons made their home outside of, the ritual played out more or less the same. The words changed, and sometimes Lee brought them presents, usually some small wonder for Hera, a bit of coloured glass or shaped stone, a little bird in a cage of bent twigs. But always Lee remained outside the fence, outside the sphere of their domesticity. And always Karl refused the temptation to leave his wife and child behind, the urge to run through the waist high grasses with Lee at his side and a strong spear in hand.

Hera grew and learned, and the presents Lee brought her changed with her. Birds in cages became the pups of wild dogs, coloured glass and shaped stone became sinew garrotes and crudely fashioned knives, cloth made out of pounded bark and rough jewelry fashioned from dully gleaming copper. Karl taught his eldest daughter to hunt, but always within a days run of the plot Sharon tended, always within a days run of home and safety. His own hunting trips, when he was alone, would run longer, the game around the settlement becoming more and more rare as their population grew. Lee's presents changed again, and he no longer left presents of game in the settlement, but only with Karl and Sharon, and he stopped going into what could now properly be called a town at all.

When Hera came into her womanhood, the first bleed crimson on her slender thighs, Karl was waiting outside the gate for Lee. If Lee were surprised, he did not show it. He merely nodded at Karl, barely breaking his stride. Karl eased into a slow lope, matching Lee stride for stride, and from the doorway Sharon watched them disappear over the horizon. The younger children asked after Karl at first, but Hera understood that her father would return eventually, and so she simply helped her mother, taking those tasks which had been her father's. 

Karl returned a month later, his broad shoulders bowed under the weight of his take. Sharon did not ask where he had been, and when Lee followed him wraithlike into the house, she simply laid another place on their already crowded table.


End file.
